1843-44- TRANSMUTATION EXPERIMENTS. 163 



at parting with you, from whom I have learned so much. 

 You will pray for me, however, and send me a word of 

 advice at times, and I will try to 'let patience have her 

 perfect work.' " Again to the same friend he says : 

 " December 27, 1843 ; I sit down to write to you with great 

 shame and confusion of face at the thought of the time 

 that has elapsed since I received your Hamburgh letters ; 

 but, in truth> I have been so occupied that I have never 

 had the leisure to sit down to write to you calmly. The re- 

 petition of Dr. Erown's experiments has engrossed me day 

 and night, and still occupies my time ; and I have been so 

 fatigued with my laboratory work, that when I left it I had 



no spirit to write you even a few lines I have great 



reason to be thankful for the health I have enjoyed since 

 you left, though it has not been uninterrupted. I had got 

 so far on in the way of limping about on a stick, that I was 

 promising myself a visit to church, and the pleasure of 

 hearing a sermon, when my hopes were disappointed by a 

 fall .down stairs, which sprained my knee, and doomed me 

 to bed and sofa for a fortnight, and to another leaf out of 

 the book of physical affliction in which I have lately had to 

 read so many lessons. I have read somewhere, that in the 

 lives of men, if wisely watched, may be discerned the finger 

 of Providence, teaching each by a kind of lesson peculiar to 

 himself; so that on one bodily affliction, on another mental 

 sorrow, on another pecuniary distress falls, the same kind 

 of trial returning again and again, while the sufferer is 

 exempt from other forms of woe. I have sometimes 

 thought there was a little truth in it, and you can suppose 

 in what way I apply it to myself. But in reality every 

 sorrow bears others in its bosom, and trial in one shape 

 must always be more or less trial in all. This is a foolish 

 speculation, and one I do not seek to indulge in. So long 



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